PHOENIX ASCENDING VI-- MORDRED
His first thought was that it was hot.
The second, that it was sandy.
And the third, that he had never been more lost in his life.
Remus Lupin staggered drunkenly to his feet, feeling as if he had literally been pulled through the eye of a needle, stampeded by a herd of rabid elephants, and churned through a food processor all in less than ten seconds flat.
"Where are we?" Vix sat in the sand beside him, an equally dazed expression on her face.
"A desert," Remus replied, the obvious the only thing he had to hold on to. The dunes seemed to go on forever, the unending sea of sand willing his mind to accept what his reason could not.
Sirius appeared over the crest of one of the dunes, a small shiny object in his hand. Remus was about to walk over to him, but there was something in Padfoot's manner that made him pause. The set of his jaw, the way he held his shoulders: in short. Remus had never seen Sirius look more angry in all his life. He strode over to the two of them and dropped whatever he had been holding onto the sand. It was a penknife. "I gave this to Harry last year," Sirius said quietly, his voice a forced even.
----
Three hours earlier...
They could do nothing but wait, watching the approaching caravan with a mixed sense of hope and foreboding. If he concentrated hard, Harry was able to discern several figures on horseback. The blinding sun was playing at long thin objects bound to their waist and bouncing off again in rainbow-prism beams of light. Staring closer, Harry felt wave of dread wash over him when he realized what was reflecting the sunlight. "Swords," he whispered.
"What?" Hermione turned to him, her face red from the heat.
"They have swords," Harry repeated. "Tied to their waist."
Ron immediately sat up, his face flushed under his freckles. "I don't know if waiting is a good idea."
"We don't have any other options," Hermione bit her lip, fiddling with a strand of hair.
Hermione was right; the caravan riders were now only a few hundred yards away and the distance was decreasing with every stride of their long limned Arabian steeds. The lead horseman's face was covered almost completely by a scarf, so that only his eyes were visible, two flashing pinpricks of brown in a face as dark as his russet stallion. His comrades, six in all, were similarly attired, dressed in what looked like the cross between a bathrobe and a bed-sheet, flapping loose behind them in the wind. Tied to each's waist was a wickedly long sword, all seven glinting maliciously at Harry. "I feel like someone out of Laurence of Arabia," he said quietly as he stood up to get a better look at the horsemen.
"What?" Ron asked blankly.
Harry was so fixated on the riders that he didn't even bother to reply. Reaching deep into the pocket of his Hogwarts robes, he pulled out the penknife Sirius had given him for Christmas the year before. It was a paltry defense against the great sabers, but it felt better than nothing at all. Besides, the penknife somehow made Harry feel safer, more at home, like Sirius was somehow close by.
The smell of horseflesh got clearer as the riders came to a halt a few paces before Harry, Ron, and Hermione, the dust kicked up by their horse's heels settling in a tiny cloud around their hoofs. The leader vaulted off his mount in one fluid motion and regarded them with what Harry's could only guess was mild curiosity. Harry set his jaw and stood tall, in what he hoped was an intimidating fashion. "Hello," he said, trying to ignore the fact that his hands were trembling.
The horseman said nothing in reply, instead turning to Hermione and locking gazes. She turned white under his stare, but held her ground firmly with a defiant gleam in her eye. Eventually the horseman left her too, and fixed his eyes upon Ron. The Weasley went redder than his carrot-top hair. But, after what seemed an eternity, the horseman turned too from Ron and fixed his gaze upon Harry. His first though was how very small he felt under the nomad's iron stare. Nothing went unnoticed, he felt as if the rider knew everything about him, each dream, every ambition, every deep-down-hidden-embarrassing-squelching-little detail. He felt more naked and helpless under the rider's gaze than he had ever felt in his entire existence. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The horseman suddenly looked away his white scarf still masking his face, making any sort of expression unreadable. Whatever the rider had hoped to test in Harry, he hoped desperately that he had passed.
The horseman reached out one gloved hand and ever so gently placed it upon Harry's forehead, running his fingers up and down his lightening scar. If the veil had been lifted from the rider's features, Harry would have sworn that he would have been smiling. Normally Harry would have told the rider to shove off, but right now he was too scared out of his wits to even thinking about making a fuss.
"How much?" The rider had turned to address Hermione; his gravely voice hard upon Harry's ears.
Hermione paled in horror, backing away from the desert horseman.
"How much?" the rider repeated, a touch of annoyance creeping into his gritty tone.
"What? What is it?" Ron said in amazement to Hermione, who looked about ready to burst into tears.
"Oh Ron, don't you see?" She bit her lip again, her voice wavering. "He wants to buy Harry!"
"What?" Throwing all pretense aside, Harry jerked out from the horseman's grasp. "No!"
Everything happened at once. I was as if he was watching himself from 1000 miles away, kicking futilely in the horseman's grip. He saw Ron draw out his wand in a desperate attempt at rescue. He heard Hermione's scream, echoing shrilly across the deserted dunes. But in all truth, there was nothing any of them could do.
Harry's last conscious thought as the flat of the blade came down upon his head was a feeling of utter hopelessness. Then through the darkness, a dream came.
....The snow swirled in tiny eddies around Harry's ankles as the bitter wind whipped around his frame, biting him deep and through to the bone with harsh intense cold. The frozen landscape burned his eyes, stretching as far as the eye could travel in an endless mesa of undying white. And then, where there had only been snow and ice, the standing stones appeared, encircling him once again, the shadows cast by their dark menacing forms staining the virgin white of the snow. Harry was standing next a large slab of stone positioned in the absolute center of the ring of stones which could only be an altar. On the other side, hidden partially in the shadow of one of the stone monoliths, a man stood.
His face: indiscernible, hidden by the folds of his deep black hood, but the position of his hand: unmistakable, its white fingers were clenched around the hilt of a long broadsword.
Harry felt his hands move of their own accord, his finger's tightening around the sword bound to his own waist, a sword he didn't even know he had. And still, the snow swirled about their ankles.
"Where's your army now?" the figure said from his position on the other side of the altar. "Where's your French whore to help you stand?"
"My French whore is a better man than you will ever be," Harry felt his mouth form the words as his conscious mind reeled in absolute confusion. His was not his voice, his was not his sword, this battle was not his.
"And that's how I won," the man hissed, his only outward sign of tension the fingers tightening around the sword bound at his hip.
"Not yet!" Harry, or whatever he had become, gripped the pommel of his own blade and brought it out of its sheath, the metal flashing in bright sunlight. The man gave a laugh, a long threatening rumble, and reached for his own sword, bringing it down hard to meet Harry's own with a sickening scrape of metal upon metal. They broke away almost as quickly as they had met, Harry staggering somewhat under the weight of his blade.
Or so he thought. The snow, which had once been so pure and white beneath his feet, was covered in blotchy stains of red. Looking down, Harry saw that his entire left side was covered in blood, seeping through a slash on his leather breastplate that he supposed traveled much deeper than the superficial wounds to his clothing. It ached him with an odd, detached kind of pain, a pain somewhat numbed by his undying disbelief.
This could not be happening.
The hooded figure had seen the wound too, and he gave an appreciative chuckle. "My men did well."
"Your men," the Harry that was somehow not, gritted his teeth, leaning out and meeting his opponent's blade with his own. "Are traitors."
"My men," the swordsman bore down upon him, lashing forwards with his sword as Harry managed to just barely leap out of the way, "understand that the weak cannot rule."
Harry was beginning to feel an undeniable anger well up at the root of soul. "Is that so?" he asked, hate tempering his aim as he parried another one of the figure's wild swings.
The man laughed harshly, "Oh, it is so. It is more so than you can ever begin to imagine." Harry wasn't about to imagine what he was dealing with. Instead, he relied on the discipline of almost loosing his life countless times accepting the unacceptable situation blindly and pressing on, meeting each one of the hooded man's blows with one of his own. Still, that horrible awful anger, that hate against this man crept in upon his consciousness, fraying Harry around the edges. He wanted to hurt his opponent more that he had ever hurt anyone in his life. Somehow, somewhere, beyond any memory, he recognized this man: recognized him, and hated the acquaintance. Biting his lip so hard that it bled, Harry gave into the side that was-not-quite-him, the side that knew the hooded figure standing before him, knew how to fight, the side that knew what was going on.
It was as if he had liquid fire flowing through his veins, for the sword moved of its own accord, and Harry was powerless to do anything but blindly follow, thrusting, parrying, going forward and back in an undying dance. His opponent matched his every move, and the two swords meeting so frequently and with such ferocity that sparks flew, hissing as they hit the snow. They moved around the altar, blades never stopping, neither one able to get closer to the other, the bloodlust locked in both psyches. For some unexplainable reason, Harry wanted nothing more than the figure's lifeblood, for he hated him with a passion unmatched by anything he had ever felt before in all of his fifteen years.
And still their swords met.
And yet the sparks flew.
Then, Harry slipped. His feet hit a patch of ice and flew out from under him; he lost the grip on his precious sword, sliding face first into the snow as his arm smashed against the stone altar. He heard a loud crack and knew with a stabbing pain that it was broken.
The man stepped over his, his expression of triumph veiled by the depths of his black hood. "You're powerless without Taliesen, duLuc, Gawain, Morgan..." He bent down over Harry's quivering body, his hood dropping even further over his pale face so that only his chin was visible. "It's just you and me... and I've won." The man was so close that Harry could feel his hot breath upon his cheek. "I never wanted this," the figure said, his voice softening slightly as Harry's heart beat out a race of untapped rage. "I never wanted Gawain to die. I never wanted the Battle of Joyous Garde, I never wanted Camallan. All I ever wanted," his voice dropped to the merest whisper, his breath freezing on the cold winter air. "Was your love, father."
And then the man's hood fell back, revealing a face Harry knew all too well, it's silvery hair sweaty and askew, gray eyes blazing in pure hatred, its pale lines sharp and patrician. Draco Malfoy smiled.
But the name rising in not-quite-Harry's mind had nothing to do with the Slytherin fifth year he knew, so far away. It was a name from a life much older than that, a name that had haunted him through centuries, a name that expressed everything he had always stood against and hated: "Mordred."
"Rex Quondom Rexque Futurus," Mordred said quietly to Harry as he stood up, his pale face hardening with every second, "We'll see..."
He raised his great broadsword high above his head, the edge of its blade catching the sun's gleam-- and then all went black...
...Harry awoke in what could have been a dream. His entire vision was clouded by a burlap sack and his body was racked up and down, forward and back, by the canter of a giant horse. He tried to cry out, but his voice wouldn't come. Futilely, he reached out for the grains of his dream, watching as they slid through his fingers like liquid memory, all the details blending into one huge blob that hovered just out of his grasp. There was Draco, and snow, and swords, and someone... someone he knew, someone terribly important that he had to remember, but for the life of him couldn't even begin to grasp. So he gave up trying to hold onto what he's rather forget. Instead he lapsed into a haunted sleep, deep, with the memories of 1000 deaths to keep him company.
----
The desert sun shone hard upon two figures lost in a sea of sand. Ron pulled himself up into a sitting position, from where one of the seven riders had thrown him. "We have to go after Harry, Hermione," he said firmly, getting to his feet.
"We have to find help," she said, her long curly hair waving in the breeze. "Someone that knows what to do. Someone that can get us home. Look at those horsemen, Ron! It's impossible, we wouldn't stand a chance--"
"No," Ron said more firmly, getting to his feet. He winced slightly as he looked off into the horizon where the horsemen had ridden. "We have to rescue Harry," Ron took a few steps forward before turning back to Hermione, who was standing next to the dune nervously, torn between loyalty to her friend and fear of the unknown. "He'd do the same for us." She followed him.
----
Viktor hurt. No, hurt was defiantly an understatement. Viktor ached. Ached so badly it felt that every square inch of his body was screaming in agony. He hadn't felt this bad since colliding head on with a bludger during the Quiddich World Cup. But then again, falling face first at incalculable speeds into a monstrous sand dune really does wonders for cultivating bruises.
OOF! And if to make matters worse, a full-grown man just collapsed on top of him. "Moovoff--" He managed to garble, not being very successful due to the fact that he had more sand in is mouth than tongue. Maybe Viktor was psychic or maybe it was just a handful of sandy luck but the man got the message. He scrambled off Viktor, managing to elbow him in some very painful spots, and the star of International Quiddich was finally to struggle to his knees, sore, sour, sandy and more lost than he could even begin to imagine.
"Vhere are ve?" he turned to the man who had so considerately crushed his ribcage, seeing without the slightest surprise that it was Romulus Lupin.
"Hello," a new voice broke in and Viktor and Romulus wheeled around in shock to see a incredibly thin man in long loose robes sitting by a cooking fire, a horse chewing absently on his hair and a leg of some unidentifiable meant dangling from one hand. He gave them a rather bemused grin, "I'd imagine you'd be hungry. Ostrich?"
"Vho are you?" Viktor felt a sense of absolute amazement and disbelief crash over him at this new stranger, calmly sitting by his fire offering them ostrich.
"They call me Posthumous," he said without blinking an eyelash. "Though on account of you dropping from the sky, I believe I'm entitled to a name or two," the man said this all very calmly, with an almost unnerving smile on his face.
"I'm Viktor Krum," Viktor said quietly, the disbelief still washing through his veins. "This is--"
"Romulus Lupin," Romulus snarled, giving Viktor a warning glare. "Where's the ostrich?"
"Ah! A man who is governed by his belly," Posthumous said with a friendly sort of grin as he reached into the cookpot and pulled out what looked like a cross between a haunch and a ribcage. "Enjoy, eh?"
Romulus made no reply as he snatched the meat out of Posthumous's outstretched hand and began gnawing voraciously.
"Ostrich?" Posthumous, seemingly unfazed by Romulus's lack of gratitude, had once again thrust his hand into the pot and was holding out another unidentifiable body part to Viktor. His stomach really was growling, and it had been hours since lunch in the Great Hall, but there was something almost sinister about the dripping bloody piece of meat that made him pause. Ostrich. Giving into the growls of his stomach he reached out a tentative hand and took the dripping food. It couldn't be worse than anything they had served in Customs.
Posthumous leaned back against his horse, gnawing avidly on his leg. "You're not from around these parts, eh?" He said this all very calmly, as if people dropped out of the sky on regular intervals.
"Vhere is here?" Viktor asked, shaking his head, still in somewhat of a daze.
"We're about 200 leagues south of Carthage, in the province of Numidia," Posthumous replied, his green eyes calm in the flickering firelight.
Numidia... Carthage... province? The words meant nothing to Viktor, only causing his head to spin further, but Romulus, sitting a little bit removed from the other two, suddenly dropped his ostrich in the sand, his jaw falling likewise. He jerked forward and met Posthumous's cool stare, "What year is it?"
"Three years since Tiberius Augstus ascended the throne," Posthumous replied, a flicker of anger passing across his face, buoyed by the gentle glow of firelight. But then, like a mere spark in the embers it was gone, replaced by a his calm unruffled facade. "784 years since the founding of the city."
"Vhat city?" Viktor said, a wave of fear crossing over him as he saw the look of absolute horror on Romulus's face.
"Rome. We're in the Roman Empire." Romulus said, spitting the words out like something dirty. "It's 35 AD, Krum." He turned to Posthumous, still sitting calmly by his horse and gave a hollow laugh, the fire casting his features into gaunt relief. "Yes... we're not from around here."
----
Gabriel was heading home. After showing Viktor Krum to the dungeons, he was just about as ready to get out of Hogwarts as any seventh year. Praising the 24 period when the apparition wards were down, Gabriel appeared in front of his own flat with a slight whoosh of air. Plan A was to make a B-line for his bed. It wasn't as if Hogwarts hadn't been comfortable, but Gabriel had been up all night running Mad-Eye Moody's warning over and over again in his head. You so much as breathe, and I know. He had no doubt that the old auror was as good as his word. How could he seriously believe that he had murdered Cornelius Fudge? How dare he even suppose? Gabriel would make no pretense of liking his uncle, but occasional arguments were nothing compared to what Moody was accusing him of. But then again, Moody wasn't so much accusing him as someone twenty years dead. It's my father's legacy, Gabriel though bitterly leaning against the hard wood of his door, my only inheritance. His ragged smile was almost bitter. Like father, like son. Moody was wrong of course, but his accusations had brought thoughts of doubt to Gabriel's until now firm resolution. How far would he go to protect Dumbledore's rag-tag group? How far would he go before breaking, giving in?
Bed.
He needed sleep. He could moralize later. Heaving a deep sigh, Gabriel fit his wand into the keyhole and turned it once. The door flew open with a slight pop.
Home at last. It's impossible to overstate the significance of a familiar room, safe haven, and warm bed when you're tired, scared, and royally pissed off. In spite of everything: Moody, Lucifer, Cornelius, Gabriel felt himself smile. Shutting the door behind him, he sunk into a particularly squashy armchair by the empty fireplace.
"Incidio," Gabriel murmured lazily, watching with satisfaction as the flames welled up out of this air, crackling merrily as they let out a halo of warmth. Yes, it was defiantly good to be home.
"Gabriel," he spun around, mouth dropping at the woman behind him.
"Hilly Constantine?" he grinned, leaping out of the chair, energy instantly renewed. "It's been what? Five years?"
"Seven," she replied, flicking her blonde hair lazily as she smiled back at him, "I haven't seen you since graduation from Hogwarts."
"Seven years," Gabriel cocked his head, amazed. It seemed like only yesterday he had been in the Gryffindor common room with Hilly, or walking along the shores of the lake, looking for the giant squid. He even remembered the time they had convinced Bill Weasley to streak through the Forbidden Forest.
"I don't have anytime for reunions," she replied, her pleasant face instantly growing dark. "Severus Snape has been arrested for the murder of Cornelius Fudge, but there's been a petition to keep the case open and Minister Malfoy feels obligated to explore all of the possibilities--"
"It's Mad-Eye Moody's petition, isn't it?" Gabriel said bitterly, instantly reading into the meaning behind her words. Hilly was never any good at lying.
She but her lip, "Minister Malfoy is just trying to be thorough, Gabriel--"
"And what does Minister Malfoy want from me?" he spat, his voice cracking with anger.
"He wants to run a blood test--" she began.
"God dammit!" he threw his hand up into the air, leaning against the fireplace.
"He want's to run a blood test," she continued hesitantly, not wanting to set Gabriel off again. "Current tests show that the blood that LUCIFER was written in isn't entirely Mr. Fudge's. Some of the Ministry pathologists believe that the killer cut himself several times while writing on Mr. Fudge's cadaver. They plan to isolate the blood and run tests against a group of samples and see if any match up--"
"I didn't murder Cornelius Fudge!" Gabriel said slowly, gritting his teeth.
"No one's saying you did," Hilly said quietly, taking a crystalline vial out of the pocket of her robes.
"Well Minister Malfoy is getting damn close," Gabriel exploded, sarcasm leaking out of every ounce of his voice.
"I need to take your blood, Gabriel," Hilly said quietly.
Wordlessly, he thrust out his arm, watching her as she dug the point of a silver dagger into the fleshy heel of his palm, letting the blood drip into here empty crystal vial, before covering the wound with a swath of gauze she dug out from the depths of her pocket. "I didn't kill Cornelius Fudge," Gabriel said quietly, a twinge of desperation in his voice. "You know I wouldn't, Hilly."
"I know you wouldn't," she said quietly, slipping the vial into the pocket of her robes. "But I'm not the Ministry." Gabriel said nothing, turning moodily towards the crackling flames. "I'll owl you when the results come back in," Hilly said, watching his back as she made for the door. "Someone had left these outside, I brought then in for you," she gestured at a vase of flowers, now sitting on Gabriel's kitchen table. He gave them a distasteful stare. They seemed too bright, too cheery for his present mood. He didn't so much as respond when Hilly disapperated with a faint swoosh of air.
Pacing up and down, Gabriel realized he would wear a hole in the floor if he did not act. His eyes traveled across the room and lingered upon a bright splash of color: the flowers Hilly had brought in. Their cheery disposition seemed not only annoying to him now but somehow, incredibly sinister. A few paces had him to the table, where he could examine them more carefully. They were sitting next to a recent issue of the Daily Prophet which's headline read: JOHN AVERY, THE ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE-FORMER-DEATH-EATER, IS MINSTER MALFOY's YET-TO-BE-CONFIRMED PICK FOR HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT. Gabriel's mind, however, was far from the confirmation hearings of John Avery as he bent towards the vase of flowers. Tentatively, he extended a hand to brush at one of the blooms, its pink petals winking innocently at him.
It was as if an electric shock hit him, the bitter jolt if pain rushing up his arm, past his shoulder and straight to his head where it began to throb, over and over and over and over...
Gabriel's eyes started to swim as the flowers dipped in and out of focus, multiplying and them melding back into a whole as his brain reeled in throws of agony. A patch of white lying by the enchanted vase was the only thing that remained steady. Gabriel extended a trembling hand and caught it before pulling it about an inch from his face so that his watering eyes could focus on the spider-web script that spread across it.
I'm watching you, Cox.
With a roar to match the throbbing between his temples, Gabriel gripped the slick sides of the vase, unheeding of the raw burst of flame that leapt from it's enchanted sides, scorching the skin of his palm. He hurled the pot of flowers against the wall of his flat, falling to his knees as it shattered and fell to the ground in a cloud of pottery shards and wads of dirt.
----
RAPPA-TAPPA-TAP
RAPPA-TAPPA-TAP
Minerva McGonagall was awakened by the scraping of claws against the window. Leaping out of bed, she groped wildly in through the darkness for her wand. "Lumos," she whispered, and her room was instantly illuminated by the dim magic light. Sidestepping yesterday's robes, thrown helter-skelter on the floor, she walked to the window and threw open the latch.
"KAW!" An enormous dark bird flapped across the sill and deposited a letter onto her lap with a squawk. Squinting through the semi-darkness, Minerva realized that it wasn't an owl...
The raven turned its sleek head and gave her an evil stare, its menacing yellow eyes narrowing. Silently, it opened its gigantic black wings and flew back out through the window, vanishing into the darkness of the night. In spite of herself, Minerva felt a shiver creep up her spine.
Under the shadow of foreboding, she reached over to her bedside table for a pair of silver-framed reading glasses. As Minerva raised the letter to her eyes, she dropped her wand in shock, the tiny ball of enchanted light going out as it hit the ground, plunging her world into darkness...
...She rushed through the Hogwarts halls, running as she never had before. Her slippers flapped in and uneven rhythm along the paving stones as her normally severe hair streamed out behind her like a flag. After what seemed an eternity, she reached the gargoyle and began slamming it with her fist. "Grack! Grack! Wake up!"
"What is it?" The Gargoyle opened his eyes halfway, letting out a sleepy growl. "Go away, I don't want to talk to you."
"Fizzing Whizbees!" Minerva shrieked, waving the letter in her hand as she jumped up and down in frustration. "I need to see Professor Dumbledore!"
"No you don't," Grack's granite lips twisted into a stony smirk. "You really don't want to know what he does up there at night, all alone--"
"Grack!" Minerva nailed him with one of her stern looks that could crack stone. In fact, it did, for Grack gave a disgruntled yawn of defeat.
"Suit yourself," he growled, his eyes drooping with exhaustion, "Don't say I didn't warn you."
Minerva didn't even bother to reply as she streamed up the stairs and into Dumbledore's office, the sound of chamber music getting ever louder as she took the stairs two at a time.
He was sitting at a harpsichord, back to the door. His fingers waltzed across the keys, playing out a melody first conceived by a composer long since dead and gone.
At the sound of her footfalls, he stopped but didn't turn around, still gazing wistfully the instrument. "I often find music an easy escape from the worries of the world, Minerva," he said quietly, his fingers lingering longingly on the bone-white keys. "It comes straight from the soul, and from that comes humanity's greatest beauty."
"We've received a letter, Albus," she said quietly, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose. "Lucius Malfoy has a warrant for your arrest."
sorry it took me so long to get out, but oliver! has been eating up my life lately, and now its finally over ::sniff sniff::, anyway thanks to all that have reviewed, and all who have read and not reviewed (please do so now), I hope you have a wonderful February and g'night :O)
